The Seven Ages of Death
Play sample
  • Published: 2 September 2021
  • ISBN: 9781405947114
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 416

The Seven Ages of Death

'Every chapter is like a detective story' Telegraph

Formats & editions
Paperback
20 Sep 2022
EBook
2 Sep 2021
Audiobook
2 Sep 2021
Buy from…
Amazon Apple Books Google Play Kobo Booktopia eBooks.com

Forensic pathologist and bestselling author of Unnatural Causes, Dr Richard Shepherd, brings his unparalleled honesty and insight to a new book about life and death.

This book is about death, but in it I will take readers on a journey through life . . .

Dr Richard Shepherd, Britain's top forensic pathologist, has spent a lifetime close to the dead.

As a medical detective, each autopsy he carries out is its own unique investigation, uncovering the secrets not only of how a person died, but also of how, through every stage of life, the risks to each of us ebb and flow.

Through 24 of his most intriguing, enlightening and never-before-told cases, Dr Shepherd shares autopsies that span the seven ages of human existence, and have taught him as much about the marvels of life as the inevitability of death. From old to young, from murder to misadventure, and from illness to accidental death, each of these bodies has something to reveal: about human development, about mortality, about its owner's life story, about justice and even about Shepherd himself.

From the bestselling author of Unnatural Causes comes a powerful, moving and above all reassuring book about death as it touches our own lives - how to understand it, how best to postpone it, and, when our time comes (as it must), how to embrace it as the last great adventure.
  • Published: 2 September 2021
  • ISBN: 9781405947114
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 416
Categories:
Share…

Also by Dr Richard Shepherd

Unnatural Causes
See all

Praise for The Seven Ages of Death

Praise for Dr Richard Shepherd

-

Heart-wrenchingly honest

Sue Black, author of All That Remains

One of the most fascinating books I have read in a long time. Engrossing, a haunting page-turner. A book I could not put down

The Times

Gripping, grimly fascinating, and I suspect I'll read it at least twice

Evening Standard

A deeply mesmerising memoir of forensic pathology. Human and fascinating

Nigella Lawson

An absolutely brilliant book. I really recommend it, I don't often say that but it's fascinating

Jeremy Vine, BBC Radio 2

Puts the reader at his elbow as he wields the scalpel

The Guardian

Fascinating, insightful, candid, compassionate

Observer

Deeply insightful . . . Shepherd is unflinching in his self-dissection

The Times

Fascinating

Daily Express

Fascinating. He has the ability to examine himself and other people with the same forensic eye that he applies to corpses - one of the reasons why his books feel so life-enhancing

Daily Telegraph

Enlightening, strangely uplifting . . . Shepherd's final chapter on death itself is a meditation of great beauty and light which puts all the darkness of the previous pages into perspective

Daily Mail

Each chapter is like a finely crafted detective story in which he expands on the causes of death as revealed by the post mortem, or the hidden reasons that precipitated it. Some are ordinary, others extraordinary. Shepherd writes beautifully, and despite its subject, the book is very funny in parts

Daily Telegraph

Heart-wrenchingly honest

Mail Online